Citizen-Driven Innovation

Read this guidebook, which explores smart cities through a lens that promotes citizens as the driving force of urban innovation. It presents different models of smart cities that show how citizen-centric methods can mobilize resources to respond innovatively to challenges in governance. The living lab approach encourages agile development and the rapid prototyping of ideas in a decentralized and user-centric manner. How can mayors and public administrators create partnerships that drive value in their communities through citizen-driven innovation? How can sustainability be integrated into municipal strategies and solutions? How can city leaders join forces to learn and network globally?

Ensuring Sustainability Chapter 4

1. Demonstrate Impact

One of the most overlooked aspects of sustainability is the ability to demonstrate in measurable terms the success of your method and its results, both externally to the outside world as well as internally, to yourself and your innovation partnership. The previous phases we have discussed are all characterized by iterative processes, which continuously require validation of previous outcomes, reflection on possible impacts, re-definition or re-focus of objectives, and sometimes a broadening of objectives and partnerships. All of these aspects require some sort of evaluation or structured understanding of the co-design processes and the results produced, together with an assessment of their ultimate impact on the city systems you are trying to change.

Impact assessment can be a tricky issue because it is easy to underestimate its complexity, reducing it to a set of simplified indicators – jobs created, money saved – through which to measure success. Though these goals are important, different evaluation stances also need to be taken into account. The most common one is that of a funding or monitoring body mainly interested in proving that money has been spent on the right projects (ex-post result evaluation). There are however also those directly involved in a project's execution who will want to know if their work is progressing well and if improvements can be made along the way (process evaluation). Finally, there are other stakeholders with a direct interest in the positive outcome of an initiative: businesses, citizens, and associations (impact assessment). These different perspectives, typical for any program evaluation, become all the more important when adopting a participatory co-design approach with greater stakeholder engagement and a greater emphasis on policy processes.

Box 28

Measuring Innovation

The European Union has devised an Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS) for measuring innovation in European regions. The Basque Country in collaboration with Innobasque and Sinnergiak Social Innovation, has in addition proposed RESINDEX, which complements the IUS with indicators more closely related to citizen-driven innovation.

Case Study
Community Mapping in Tandale

Description	Context	Challenges
The World Bank funded a successful community mapping initiative in Tandale in August-September 2011, on the basis of a similar initiative in Nairobi's Kibera slum. Community mapping aims to empower inhabitants of informal settlements to gain a sense of place and citizenship and express their problems using maps and story-telling platforms. The process relies on using location based mobile services together with a community mapping technology such as OpenStreetMap, and thus involves community engagement and training.	Tandale is an informal settlement on the outskirts of Dar Es Salaam, covering an area of 90 hectares with a population of 71,250. Due to difficulties such as access, only three or four of the main roads crossing the settlement appear on official maps; this naturally has a significant impact not only on the delivery of city services, but also on the identity of the people living there. The community mapping initiative, designed to address this issue, was funded by the Bank but carried out in partnership with GroundTruth (the NGO creators of Map Kibera), Twaweza (a local NGO for citizen advocacy), and the local Ardhi University's urban planning department.	The main challenges in such an initiative are related to the typical issues of working in such a disadvantaged context: insufficient equipment (from printers to meeting facilities) and technological illiteracy in the population. In addition, partnership building needs not only to bring together the necessary resources but also connect with the local community; for this, particular attention was paid to a 'buddy system' to pair the University students - seen as 'outsiders' - with grassroots community leaders.

Actions	Results	Impacts	Scaling Up
The community mapping process started with a training program involving 25 students and 18 community members. Groups were then formed to cover different areas, and a first site reconnaissance carried out, followed by the phase of actual data collection, tracing paths, and signaling important landmarks, with the final phase editing and uploading the data. The mapping process was paralleled by a more 'human' mapping of the area, with story-telling, blogging, photos, and videos.	As a result of this effort, the Tandale community now has a detailed map. The map shows paths and significant buildings, and includes information such as the location of sanitary facilities, public water points, health care services, and places of worship, but also hair dressing salons, coffee shops, musical libraries, and various shops and kiosks.	The project also includes a community blog, through which citizens build on the mapping experience to identify issues, propose, and discuss solutions. The aim is to allow the recognized authority and other development stakeholders to engage more actively with the community, for instance by potentially integrating feedback into the World Bank's Dar Es Salaam Metropolitan Development Project.	The community mapping project in Tandale is an example of a new approach to development problem-solving that taps the promise of ubiquitous and cheap technology, open source tools, social networks, and the wisdom of local and global experts and innovators. The project's training curriculum, available on-line, can be used for future iterations and extension to other districts of Dar Es Salaam and beyond. More broadly, the OpenStreet- Map community overall is gaining in scale and scope in both developed and developing countries, allowing for future development and extension of community mapping methodologies.

A robust multi-stakeholder evaluation strategy starts from the identification of the different actors directly or indirectly affected by the project and, for each, examines what specific goals they have, criteria of success for progress towards those goals, and visible or measureable changes that can be considered as evidence of that progress. For instance, for a project addressing public transportation, a business association might have as a goal the ability of employees to get to work on time, while a citizens' group may prioritize the comfort of seating; both would be interested in the cost of the ticket. A multi-stakeholder evaluation strategy takes these and other criteria into account and highlights the degree to which different goals are being met within the framework of the overall project objectives.

For innovation processes, evaluation not only looks at final outcomes, but starts with an ex-ante or context analysis of the existing situation. This helps define baseline indicators, or the starting values of the things the project intends to improve. It also aims to identify the dynamics of the systems that constitute the landscape within which the project intends to act. As the project progresses through the different phases outlined in previous chapters, process evaluation comes into play. This monitors the interaction between stakeholders and the nature and quality of co-creation processes that occur, and generally helps promote learning among stakeholders by throwing light on certain dynamics they may not have been aware of. It also helps support self-governance of innovation processes as they progress, by highlighting potentials for conflict and opportunities for resolution. In addition, process evaluation's observational stance is often able to identify emergent or unexpected elements of creativity that the stakeholders directly involved might overlook. By mixing the different ex-ante, process, and outcome approaches, a well structured evaluation strategy can be fundamental in assessing the potential impact of a specific project.